


Sam's Therapy

by Arianllyn



Series: Therapy [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:21:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26508895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianllyn/pseuds/Arianllyn
Summary: After seeing Dean making such excellent progress on his own issues, Sam decides he'd like some help, as well, so he finally makes an appointment with Mia Vallens.Note:  Chapter 1 of this story is also Chapter 209 of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Winchester," but Sam's therapy will continue in this story only, going forward. I believe it will help you to have read "You're a Mean One, Mr. Winchester" before reading this, as both are canon-divergent.
Relationships: Gabriel/Sam Winchester
Series: Therapy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814179
Comments: 23
Kudos: 12





	1. Session 1

“Come in, Sam. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Yeah. You, too, Mia. Been a while.” Sam wiped his damp palms nervously on his pants as he slid past Mia into her office.

“Have a seat, Sam, wherever you’re comfortable. Would you like a bottle of water? I’m getting one for me, so it’s no trouble.”

“Ah, sure. Yeah. Thanks.” Sam raised his hand in an abortive half-wave, then set it back in his lap. He looked around the office, a little nervously.

Mia came in and handed a bottle of water to him, then twisted her own bottle open as she sat on the couch kitty-corner to where Sam was seated. She took a swig, recapped the bottle, and set it on the table between them.

“So, Sam. I want to start by telling you that I do know some of your history; obviously, you’re a legend in the supernatural circles in which we both travel; we’ve talked once before; I’ve read Chuck Shurley’s books; etc. And I understand that some of what you have to tell me would sound ridiculous or nonsensical to an outsider, or get you on heavy drugs or ECT treatment at a locked facility, if you said it to someone else. But I know that you are not delusional, you’ve simply had experiences that were outside the norm, and I will not judge. This is a safe space, Sam. 

“So, Sam. How have you been? What brings you in to see me?” She smiled softly.

“Well. I don’t sleep well. Or often. Or much. I have horrible dreams. Those have lessened a bit lately, for a couple of reasons, but I still have the dreams now and then, and they’re bad. I know my brother’s been here, and I know he’s been feeling really good about the work he’s been doing with you, Mia, but I don’t know how much, if anything, he’s told you about my situation, and….”

“Sam, even if Dean and I talked about you all session, every session - and I assure you, we don’t - I couldn’t use that information to treat you, nor could I even mention it to you. Yes, your brother comes here, and I can tell you that only because he already has - and I understand that it was the result of an ultimatum that you handed to him. But I can’t tell you what he and I talk about, unless it’s something he’s told you. I would prefer, in fact, that we treat the situation as if Dean were not also one of my clients, as if I knew nothing from him. I would prefer to deal with you on the basis of just what you tell me, yourself. However, that’s with the caveat that if you leave out something I know from another source, that I consider important, I’ll ask about it, rather than let it go. All right?”

Sam nodded. “That’s fair. Yeah. Totally.”

“So. You say you have bad dreams, and as a result, you don’t sleep enough. How long have you been having these kinds of dreams, Sam?”

Sam considered. “Well… actually, there are really three kinds of dreams. One is your average everyday kind of nightmare, the kind anyone could get. Those fade from memory quickly, and I generally wake up out of them and go right back to sleep without difficulty. The second kind is a memory nightmare. It’s not happening now, but it did happen, in that past, and in my dream, I re-live it. Those tend not to wake me right away - they grab hold of me and want to keep me, not release me - and once I do manage to wake, I don’t even want to try to sleep again right away.”

“And the third kind of dream, Sam?” Mia asked.

“The third kind are visions,” he told her. “They’re not always bad, but usually they are. And they come true, unless I act quickly to stop them. Usually, they come true by the fourth time I have the same one.”

“Really. Interesting. How often would you say you get the vision kind of dream, Sam?”

“Maybe once or twice a year. Maybe a little less often now than I used to, when I was in college.”

“And when did the vision type of dreams start to occur?”

“When I was a senior in college, so, I was 21, 22. Around then.”

“Do you remember the first one?”

“Yeah. I ignored it. I thought it was just a really bad dream, y’know? I didn’t know better, then.”

“So, you ignored it, and what happened, Sam?”

“Jess - my girlfriend at the time - died.”

“Do you think Jess’ death was your fault, Sam?”

“Yes. And no. I didn’t cause it, but I ignored the dream. I could’ve warned her, saved her, but I thought it was  _ just _ a dream, so I did nothing.”

“Who  _ actually  _ caused Jess’ death, Sam?”

“Well, a demon. It’s one of two, depending on whether you think the one giving the orders is the one who matters, or the one who set the fire and stabbed Jess is the one who matters.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Yeah.”

“Which one gave the orders?”

“Azazel. He also killed my mother.”

“And which one stabbed Jess and set the fire?”

“Well, it wasn’t actually the demon’s name, but - Brady. Brady was a friend of mine, but he was killed, and replaced by a demon wearing him, during our sophomore year - I actually didn’t find that out until much later, but yeah. He actually introduced me to Jess, first.”

“So, it was the demons’ fault, right?”

“Yeah. But still.”

“But still you feel guilty over something for which you know you weren’t responsible?”

Sam chuckled and glanced down. “Yeah.”

“Do you do that often? Take responsibility for others’ actions?” Mia asked.

Sam continued to look down, and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Let’s get back to your dreams. Counting all three types of dream, how often would you say you dream, Sam? Every night? More than once every night? Less? More?”

“Probably some kind of dream at least once per night; sometimes more,” Sam admitted.

“How often would you say you have more than one dream in the same night?”

“Maybe two, three times a week.”

“When you have what you referred to as the ‘everyday’ type of dream, are those consistently bad dreams? Or are they good dreams sometimes, mixed in? Or are they consistently good dreams?”

Sam shook his head. “I rarely have what I would consider a good dream. Almost all the dreams I have are bad.”

“Hmm. Okay, before we go further down the dreams rabbit hole, Sam, is your dream-related insomnia the only reason you sought help? Or are there other issues that we’ll need to cover as well?”

Sam straightened up and nodded. “Um, yeah. There are some others.”

“Such as?”

“Well, the guy I’m dating has a habit of faking his death and disappearing for years at a time. He also takes unnecessary risks and puts himself in harm’s way on a semi-regular basis. So, now, I have a little trouble trusting that he won’t do it again, even though he’s promised not to. I don’t think it’s interfering in the relationship, but I know it’s there.”

“So, trust issues? Would you say generally you have difficulty trusting people, or is it just in this one instance?”

“No, the opposite - I usually trust too much, too fast. Sometimes long beyond when I should stop, and in the face of warnings not to.” Sam looked a little sheepish.

“Give me a for instance, Sam.” Mia smiled softly in encouragement.

“Well, Ruby. I should never have trusted her.”

“Tell me about Ruby, Sam.”

“Well, she was a demon. She pretended to be on ‘our side’ and to have my best interests at heart, but it was all a lie. She was really working for Lilith, the first demon ever created by Lucifer, in trying to break Lucifer free of his Cage. And she manipulated me into doing exactly that.”

Mia nodded. “Okay. Anything else? Any other reasons to want therapy, Sam?”

“Well, yeah. Mia, you’ve read the books, and while they’re not perfectly accurate, by any means, you know a lot of what’s gone on. I have a lot of guilt. I’ve done some truly fucked-up things, Mia. Azazel wanted me to lead his demon army, but more than that, if I couldn’t free Lucifer and be his vessel, Azazel wanted me to be the new King of Hell. Even now, there’s a claim on Hell in my name, and there are… entities that would still like me to be on the throne, there. I have no interest in ruling Hell, but given the things I’ve done over the course of my life, I’ll probably go there when I die - I have no illusions that I’m a good person going to Heaven - and if I’m going down, wouldn’t it be better to rule than to suffer in the Pit? So, there’s that.”

“Hmm. Sam, I don’t have the theological qualifications necessary to argue whether or not you qualify to go to Heaven, but it seems to me that having sacrificed yourself to save the world - which I notice you conveniently left out, there - you’d have a good argument for going up, rather than down. You trapped Lucifer in your body and jumped into the Cage, with no expectation of rescue, did you not?”

Sam blushed. “Well, yeah. But that’s not because I’m a good person, Mia. It just needed to be done.”

“And you think just anyone could have done it, because it needed to be done? Like a load of laundry, or mopping the floor? No. Sam, you did something extraordinary, and you know it.”

“I disagree. I think anyone who had the means and opportunity would have done the same, or tried to.”

Mia leaned forward and took Sam’s hands in hers. “No, Sam. Many many people would have been too afraid to try. Most people. What you did took true strength and courage. You’re being dishonest with yourself to try to claim otherwise, Sam.”

Sam shrugged it off, but the tips of his ears got darker red.

“Anything else, Sam?”

Sam considered a moment. “Well… kind of. Yeah.”

“What’s that?” Mia waited.

“It has been suggested in the past that Dean and I are co-dependent on each other to an unhealthy degree. And I can see it. I love my brother, I do, but I also harbor a lot of resentment and other feelings that aren’t so great. I’ve always felt like I didn’t measure up, that I didn’t have his approval, and I’ve gone back and forth between needing it desperately and wondering why I ever wanted it. I love Dean, but my relationship with him is admittedly fucked up. And I think it’s maybe time to untangle it a bit, work through that, and try to… I don’t know, stand alone and be healthy.”

Mia nodded. “Your relationship with Dean is complicated. And clearly important to both of you.”

“Yes. I don’t want to hurt Dean, but there are times when I just need to get away from him for a while. But we seem to always end up cycling back around to being together. I guess I’ve been hoping that now that he has Cas, he won’t need me as much, and I have Gabe, so maybe I won’t need Dean as much.”

“But untangling that, as you say, is difficult,” Mia acknowledged. “For right now, I understand that you two are both living and working in the same building, with your respective significant others, correct? How’s that going?”

“Well, it’s okay. It works all right. It’s not like I want Dean and Cas to leave, and my work is there, so I’m certainly not going anywhere. I think once Dean has the Salvage Yard in Sioux Falls open, he’ll be up there more, and maybe it’ll all just kind of shake out. I just don’t want to do or say the wrong thing and end up hurting him unnecessarily, especially if he’s going to be gone naturally anyway. Does that make sense?”

Mia nodded again. “Yes. You love your brother, but you’ve been in each others’ pockets your whole life. He raised you, so he’s more than your brother, but you’re an adult and don’t need a parent, now. It’s natural that you’d want some independence, and yet not want to give up the person on whom you’ve always depended.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. So, the issues we’ve identified so far to work on in therapy, then, are these: first, insomnia related to three types of essentially negative dream experiences; second, your guilty conscience, which takes on responsibility for others’ actions, as well as your own, to an unhealthy degree; third, your issues with being able to trust others in a healthy way, such that you apparently fail to give appropriate levels of trust to your significant other, and yet, seem to trust others far too much, too soon; fourth, I think you have a little bit of a martyr complex, complicated by the fact that you actually have been the world’s savior, yet don’t like to admit it; and fifth, your relationship with your brother, which has a host of sub-issues related to it. Does that about sum it up, Sam?” Mia inquired.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I think that’s basically it.”

“I find it interesting that you haven’t even mentioned your father, Sam.”

“What about him?” Sam’s voice was level.

“Sam, it’s not exactly a secret that your father neglected you and Dean to the point of abuse. As already mentioned, Dean had to raise you, and he’s only four years older. I know that Dean has discussed with you, because he’s told me he has, that his relationship with John is one of the foundational problems that he and I have been working through in his therapy. Moving you around constantly, living in motels, changing schools, losing people over and over and over due to always being on the move - these have all led to Dean’s abandonment and anger issues. Yet you haven’t even brought John up once. That’s interesting.”

“Dean had it a lot harder than I did. Dad made Dean take on way too much, way too young, and Dean had to be my parent as well as my brother. But Dean also sheltered me as much as he could. I know that there were lean times, I’m not stupid, okay? But Dean always shouldered the responsibility; if one of us had to go hungry, it was going to be him, and he was always going to be sure I got fed. Now, at the time, I didn’t know just how bad it was, because Dean wouldn’t let me see it, y’know? But as I got older, I figured it out. But I’m not angry at John. I have the luxury of not having had to worry about John, because I had Dean. Dean didn’t have anyone, and I totally get why he’d be angry at Dad. For me, though, John is just… not important. Yeah, we moved around a lot, but I was kind of a loner anyway. I had my books, and I had Dean. Dean was my constant, and I could rely on him. I knew Dean would never abandon me. So I don’t have the same fears that Dean has. Dean spared me all of that. And I know exactly what that cost him, believe me, though I don’t know that he knows that. He wouldn’t want to know that, I don’t think.”

“It’s still interesting. You say that you had Dean, but Dean didn’t have anyone. Didn’t Dean have you?”

“Well, sure, kind of; but I was so much younger than Dean. When Dean was 10, I was 6. He was doing the cooking, the laundry, the shopping. He was already being trained by Dad to be a hunter. Dad didn’t start training me until I was a lot older than Dean had been when Dad started training him. Plus, I ran away a lot. I wasn’t always a happy kid, believe me. And when I did run away, it was Dean that got punished for not keeping an eye on me. So no, he couldn’t really rely on me. I was a kid, and I was allowed to just be a kid. Dean never was.”

“Hmm. It’s also interesting to me that you were aware that Dean went without. He seems to think you weren’t aware.”

“Well, I wasn’t  _ always  _ aware. I mean, when I was a little kid, he managed to hide most of it pretty well. It was later, looking back, that I realized that he had to have been suffering. I think I was probably twelve, maybe thirteen, when I started to realize the crap that Dean had to put up with that I didn’t. But I never told Dean that I’d figured it out, because I could tell that he didn’t want me to know. I let him think that he’d succeeded in hiding it from me as well as he thought he had.”

Mia nodded. “Okay. So you don’t think you need to discuss John, then?”

“No, I really don’t think I do. If you think there’s something there that I’m missing, I’m happy to consider it, Mia, but it’s just a basic truth to me - John was not my father, except in terms of being the sperm donor. In every way that mattered. Dean was my parent. Dean, and later, Bobby Singer, but when I was a kid, when I thought of the person who was in charge of taking care of me? That was Dean. It was never John. And I’m honestly fine with that.”

Mia pursed her lips, but then nodded. “All right. I can see that. Okay, then, going forward, we have the five issues that I laid out earlier to work on. And I have one final concern that I wanted to ask you about, Sam. Alcohol. Dean has acknowledged that he is an alcoholic. He tells me that John was one, as well. Do you also have issues with alcohol?”

“I drink now and then. A beer or two, or a glass of whisky. I like the taste. But I don’t believe I have a problem with it, no. After Dean’s last binge, when I laid down the law and told him he had to get help, I cleared the Bunker of alcohol, so we don’t have any on hand, and if I want a beer, I’d have to go out to get one. I haven’t bothered, and I don’t miss it.”

“Fair enough.”

“But I am a recovering addict. I was addicted to the demon blood. Ruby got me hooked on it. I’ve been clean for a long time, but If I’m honest… yeah. I still remember exactly how it felt to have that simmering inside of me. Boosting my confidence, and my ego. I both loved and despised it at the same time. I don’t want it, and I’d refuse it if offered, but… yeah. I’ll always be an addict.”

Mia leaned forward and took Sam’s hand again. “It takes true strength to be able to admit that, Sam. And to stay clean. How long?”

“Since I last had any? When I said ‘yes’ to Lucifer in Detroit. That was in May 2010, so it’s been more than 9 years.”

“Any reason for current concern that you’ll give in to temptation?” Mia’s eyes twinkled as she asked.

Sam laughed. “No. None.”

“Okay. No other drugs, I assume?”

“Correct.”

Mia nodded. “Okay, then. We’ve got five pretty substantial issues to work on, going forward. And I’m not going to whitewash it, Sam, they’re complicated issues, and it won’t be easy. There likely will not be big ‘aha!’ moments, as you’re already fairly self-aware. This is going to be a slog through minutiae and details, and it likely won’t be much fun.”

“I get it, Mia. I’m in. And I’ll stay in, even if it isn’t ‘fun,’ and even if the progress is slow and not terribly obvious. Dean’s come a long way pretty fast, but there were reasons for that, number one being Cas. The fact that they turned their relationship around and finally got themselves on track was huge for Dean. I’ve got Gabe, and we’re fairly solid, but, like I said, there’s that outstanding trust issue, and I don’t think that’s going away easily. I get what you mean about there won’t be any ‘aha!” moments. That’s okay. It’s a process, a journey. I’m in it for the long haul, Mia. I want to be healthy, not just getting by.”

“Well, that’s an excellent starting place, Sam. As I said, you strike me as someone who is self-aware. That can be very helpful in therapy. When someone sees the reasons behind why they engage in negative behaviors, it makes the negative behaviors easier to stop. But you don’t seem to have many negative behaviors, Sam. You’re not drowning yourself in booze, or striking out in anger randomly. So it’s not a matter of not engaging in negative behavior so much as, if you’ll excuse the metaphor, finding a safe path through a somewhat boggy swamp, and trying to shore up that path as much as possible. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes. It really does.”

“Okay, then I’d like to propose something. With Dean, I’ve been doing weekly sessions that have run very long. I’d like to take a different approach with you, Sam. I’d like for you to take a half-hour each morning to talk with me, either on the phone or online with a conference call app, for at least a couple of weeks. Structured, short, conversations, about just one of our outlined issues per call. And then for the rest of the day, I’d like for you to do other things. Be active, get out and go running, get some work done, whatever else you need to do, but not thinking about therapy. Therapy is for therapy sessions only. And in two weeks, we’ll evaluate and see if we want to continue in that vein. Would that work for you?”

Sam considered it, then nodded slowly. “So I shouldn’t be thinking about these issues outside of when we talk about them?”

“Not actively, no. Your brain will have them on simmer on the back burner. But that’s where I want them, for now. All right?”

“Okay. So, I should just call you each morning?”

“Yes. It doesn’t matter what time you call, so long as it’s before 10:00. I don’t take early morning in-office appointments, so you won’t be interrupting another client. When you call, I’ll tell you which issue we’ll discuss, and then you and I will chat about that issue, and just that issue - nothing else - for thirty minutes, at which time we’ll stop, and each go on about our day.”

“Okay. So I wouldn’t be coming in here at all?”

“I don’t think it’s necessary for you to come all the way across town, Sam. These will be just short chats. As I said, your brain will do the heavy lifting, but over time, on simmer, without active thought. I think this approach will work better for you than journaling or weekly sessions. I don’t think you need that. I think you need to get out of your head a bit. So, again, be active, go running, or do your work, but don’t actively think about therapy unless we’re on the phone.”

Mia rose from the couch. “I think that’s enough to be getting on with, for now. I’ll speak with you tomorrow, Sam.”

Sam got up, as well. “Okay. tomorrow then. Thank you, Mia.”

Mia walked with him over to the door, and held it for him. “Have a good day, Sam.”

“You too. Bye.”

“Goodbye.” She smiled, and closed the door behind him.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you think there are other issues that Sam and Mia should be covering in their chats! 
> 
> Please comment! :D


	2. The First Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During their first therapy-on-the-phone session, Sam and Mia discuss his 'memory nightmare' dreams.

As soon as Sam and Gabe returned to the Bunker from their run, Gabe went into the kitchen to collapse, and Sam went to the soundproofed room down the hall from the library. Sam got comfortable in the reclining chair that was his favorite feature of that room, and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed Mia’s number, and waited.

Mia answered on the second ring.

“Hello, Sam. Good morning. Are you seated comfortably, somewhere you won’t be disturbed, and ready to begin?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sam smiled.

“Excellent. Let’s get right into it, then. Our topic for discussion today is your nightmares, the ones you described as being ‘memory nightmares.’ I’d like for you to describe the most recent of these ‘memory nightmares’ that you had to me, in detail. Start with when this dream occurred, please.”

“Um, okay, sure. Um. Well, I actually had one just last night. In the dream, I was back in the Cage, trapped, with Lucifer and Michael. I don’t know if it’s from when all of me was trapped there, or just my soul; the memories end up being impossible to distinguish on that basis - but it’s definitely a memory, because I can remember the dream, on the one hand, and can compare it to a waking memory I have of the same experience, on the other; tiny details may be off, as my subconscious tries to tell me things, but the primary events are the same, if that makes sense.”

“It does. Go on, Sam.”

“Okay. So, by way of explanation, Mia, the Cage is literally just that - a Cage, hanging from chains in a large open area in Hell, about seven feet wide by about nine feet deep, and about six feet tall. Now, I’m six feet five inches tall. So, standing, I had to constantly bend, or slouch, or duck my head; the only way I could be really comfortable was to sit or lie down. So, of course, Lucifer and Michael never allowed me to sit or lie down. 

“Also by way of explanation, I was Lucifer’s vessel while on Earth, but as soon as I had jumped into the Cage to trap him, Lucifer no longer needed a vessel, and so he jumped out of me, trying to get back out the door before it slammed shut. But Michael hadn’t quite realized what it was that we were falling into, so he was in Lucifer’s way, and not trying to get out or keep the door open, and so Lucifer was blocked in. He was furious with Michael over that. But once Michael realized where we were and what had happened, he stopped wanting to fight with Lucifer, and just spent all his time looking for a way to escape from the Cage. Once he realized there wasn’t one, well, that’s when he started to lose it.”

“And by lose it, you mean…?” Mia asked.

“I mean he lost his temper, and maybe his sanity. He couldn’t really effective torture  _ Lucifer  _ \- they’re both Archangels, and approximately equal in power - so, he started taking his frustrations out on  _ me _ . First, it was just little nasty snarky comments, but then it escalated from verbal abuse to physical abuse, especially since Lucifer never bothered to hold back, and physically abused me from the moment the Cage’s door closed.”

“Now, Sam, when you say ‘physical abuse,’ what are you including in that?” Mia inquired.

“Everything, from slaps and shoves, to sexual abuse, to torture with flames, or whips, or scalpels. See, whatever they can imagine, Michael and Lucifer can manifest. So, if Lucifer wanted a riding crop, he suddenly had one in his hand, and when he was done with it, it would disappear. If they wanted me naked, well, that was their option; I had no way to prevent them from snapping their fingers and ridding me of clothes. I didn’t have that talent, so I was basically at their mercy, and they really didn’t have any. Until my soul was rescued from the Cage after about a year, in Earth time, I was their punching bag, a whipping boy. Basically, I was an object to be used as they pleased.”

“All right, so I have the background now. Please go on to describe the particular dream from last night, Sam,” Mia prodded.

“Right. Um, sure. Okay. So, last night, I dreamed of the first time that Michael raped me. I was in the Cage, and Michael was pouting at the end farthest from me, and Lucifer was bugging me. I was trying to just get some rest, but one of his favorite ways to torture me was to keep me from getting any sleep. So, he was poking and prodding and telling horrible little punny jokes, just to keep me awake. Which doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re as exhausted as I was by that point….”

“Yes, I understand, Sam. I’ve been sleep deprived. Go on,” Mia prodded him again.

“But then, Michael decided to get in on the action, and came over, and started shoving. He’d shove me toward Lucifer, and Lucifer’d be pissy and shove me back at him. Understand, to either of them, my weight was literally nothing to catch, but they were shoving hard enough to bruise me badly, all over my back and abdomen. And then Lucifer, instead of shoving me back toward Michael, just caught me, turned me to face him, my back to Michael, and he held me around my shoulders, kicking at my feet so they were apart, my legs behind me so I had to lean into him - which I had to do, anyway, really, due to my height - and Michael snapped his fingers, and my clothes disappeared, and Lucifer laughed, and said he’d hold me, and Michael should go ahead. So, Michael stepped forward between my legs, grabbed my hips - again, hard enough to bruise - slapped my ass hard, lined up and pushed in hard, just dry, no preparation at all. 

“I screamed - it hurt badly enough to make me nauseous. Michael just started going to town, riding me hard - forgive me for being graphic, Mia, but….”

“That’s fine, Sam. Please continue, don’t worry about sparing my feelings.”

“And then Lucifer, for some unknown reason, started being  _ nice _ to me. Kissing me gently, whispering words of praise and adoration, even as he held me still for his brother’s rape. And by then, I was so tired, and so in need of some kindness, that when he told me to relax… I did. He was kissing me and stroking me, and making me feel good, even as Michael was getting off on hurting me. And it crossed my wires, confused me, and made it so I couldn’t tell which felt good and which felt bad - the pain, or the gentleness. And I started to cry, and then Lucifer licked my tears and started to giggle. Michael pulled out, and Lucifer shoved me down on my knees and told me to suck him off, and… and… I didn’t want to, but he’d just been making me feel good, and… I was so tired… so….”

“So, you obeyed.”

“Yes. I thought maybe, if I was good, he’d keep being nice.”

“But he wasn’t.”

“No, he wasn’t. Or, at least, not with any regularity. Sometimes, he would be, but it was always while Michael was doing something horrible. If Michael was leaving me alone, Lucifer was usually hurting me. But if Michael was torturing me in some way, Lucifer would hold me and make sure I couldn’t squirm away from Michael somehow, but at the same time, he’d give me kisses, and tell me how I was strong, and good, and he’d take the pain away. But then as soon as Michael would finish, he’d abuse me, too. I felt like I had whiplash, sometimes, his mood would change so quickly.”

“So, in the dream last night, Sam, were all of the details the same as your waking memory of the time that Michael first raped you?”

Sam considered the question briefly. “I think so, yeah.”

“So, your subconscious wasn’t trying to tell you anything, other than to remind you that you went through a traumatic experience?”

“I guess so.”

“Why would your subconscious want to remind you of that, Sam?”

“Well, Michael and Lucifer - a different Lucifer, but I don’t know that it matters - are currently living in my brain. And they’re being pretty quiet and good, so perhaps my subconscious wants to remind me that I shouldn’t trust them, because given the chance, they’d hurt me again. Consciously, I know that Lucifer’s lost the Mark of Cain, which was responsible for a lot of the issues he had that caused God to lock him in the Cage originally, and that both Michael and Lucifer, out of the Cage, have promised to assist us and they haven’t done anything to hurt me in quite a while.”

“But you don’t trust them.”

“Yeah. Too many reasons not to. No matter what they say now.”

“Okay. Are all of your ‘memory nightmare’ type dreams about Michael or Lucifer and the Cage? Or are some different in some respects?” Mia asked.

“No. I mean, most of those dreams are of Michael and Lucifer in the Cage, but yeah, some are different.”

“Okay, what else ya got, Sam?”

“Sometimes, I dream that Jake Talley is killing me again, and I’m falling forward, Dean is catching me, falling to his knees, and I’m bleeding out from the kidneys, my spinal cord severed. That one, at least, is quick. From the time that Jake hit me with the knife until I died in Dean’s arms on the ground was only a few moments, at most.

“Sometimes, I dream that I’m back in my apartment at Stanford, and I’ve just come back from the weekend away with Dean, when we went to look for Dad. I come in, find the plate of cookies that Jess baked for me, I eat one; I can hear the shower running. I go in the bedroom and fall back on our comfy bed - the bed belonged to Jess, and it was huge - and close my eyes. I feel a drop land on my forehead. I open my eyes, look up, and see Jess sprawled out on the ceiling, gutted… and then she bursts into flames. And then Dean bursts in, and I wake up.

“Sometimes, I dream that I’m doing part of the Trials again. Either I’m beneath the hellhound, holding my breath to avoid the stink of her breath and the blood that’s gushing from the wound where I’ve knifed the bitch, or I’m escaping from Hell with Bobby to Purgatory, only to realize that our guide from Purgatory back to Earth isn’t there, and isn’t coming, and we’re on our own, or I’m in the church with Crowley, getting attacked by Abaddon.

“Sometimes, I dream that it’s the time right after the wall fell, the wall that Death constructed in my head to guard against the memories of my soul being tortured in the Cage. I remember the bartender who helped me, the car ride with Dean and Bobby, and I remember having to kill the other parts of my psyche in order to try to put my shattered brain back together. I remember being in the psych ward, hallucinating that Lucifer was there, until Cas saved me; in the dream, Cas walks in, and then I wake up.”

Sam paused to take a breath. 

“Sam. I get that you’ve had a traumatic, often horrific, life, and you have a lot of bad memories that could manifest themselves as nightmares. I understand there may be more. But would you say that we’ve gone through the ones that are the most significant? The ones you have most often?”

Sam considered the question. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And which are the ones you have most often? Say, the top three.”

“Well, I would say the one of Jake is probably number three, the one of Jess is number two, and all of the dreams with Michael and Lucifer grouped together are tied at number one.”

“And how often would you say you have one of those top three worst ‘memory nightmares’?”

“At least once or twice per week. Sometimes I try to get more rest and take a nap, but I almost always end up dreaming if I sleep during the day, and it’s usually one of those. It’s a little counter-productive.”

“I understand that Castiel briefly turned off your REM cycle; has he turned it back on, now?” Mia asked.

“Well, yes, I had a dream last night. Can’t dream without a REM cycle. For a while he had it turned off, then he would turn it on temporarily and guide my dream into a good memory on purpose, and then turn it off again. But yeah, it’s back on.”

“Good. I would prefer that it not be turned off again, Sam, even with Castiel monitoring your dreams as you just described and trying to keep them to the good memories. Going without a natural REM cycle, even temporarily, is not healthy. We have to find better tools to keep you from having negative dream experiences. Now, I understand you’ve also tried exercise, correct?”

“Yeah. I tried just running until I was too tired to dream. But then I usually made the mistake of having coffee or a soda too soon before I tried to fall asleep, and I’d stay awake, instead of falling into deep sleep right away. I like to run, I’m training for a marathon, but trying to run away from my dreams wasn’t sustainable.”

“Correct, but the endorphins from the ‘runner’s high’ can keep you from having a bad dream. When do you usually run, Sam? In the morning, or before bed?”

“Depends on how far I’m intending to go. If it’s just a short run, then I might do that before bed. Usually my training runs, the ones where I run the full marathon length or longer, sometimes up to fifty miles, those I do in the morning.”

“For the time being, Sam, I know you’re training for a marathon, but I’d like you to keep it to marathon length, or shorter if you’re going to run in the morning. Maybe try breaking up your running into several outings per day, so you get a run of a good length within an hour or two at the most before you go to bed, with the endorphins still flowing. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yeah, Mia, it does. I can do that. I think Gabe’d be happy.”

“And Gabe is…?”

“My boyfriend. He hates running, but insists on coming with me, no matter how far I’m planning to run. This morning, I did 40 miles, he got as far as about mile 33, and I thought I was gonna have to have someone come and pick him up. But he eventually soldiered on.”

“Sam, do you own a bicycle? Does anyone who lives in the Bunker?”

“Um. I don’t know. I think there might be one in the garage, but I’m not sure. Why?”

“Well, Sam, if Gabe can ride a bike, it might be easier for him to keep up with you if he could ride along, rather than trying to keep up.”

Sam was silent for a moment. “I can’t believe we hadn’t thought of that before.”

“Okay, Sam,” Mia said, clearly amused, “our time for today is up, but I’ll speak with you again tomorrow morning. Have a good day.”

“You, too, Mia. Thanks.” Sam ended the call, and went to go find Gabriel to suggest that he ride a bike.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Sam can re-direct his dreams to happier memories with an endorphin rush from exercise before bedtime, he and Gabe might be a bit happier. Who says the exercise has to be running? ;) 
> 
> Please comment! ;)


	3. Second Call - Saturday Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Mia have their second daily therapy phone call.

As he’d done on Friday, Sam went to the soundproofed room down the hall from the library. Sam got comfortable in the same reclining chair, and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed Mia’s number, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long; Mia answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Sam. Good morning. Are you seated comfortably, somewhere you won’t be disturbed, and ready to begin?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sam smiled.

“Excellent. Let’s get right into it, then. Our topic for discussion today is your trust issues. You stated in our meeting on Thursday that you have difficulty in giving your full trust to your current partner, Gabriel, yet you often find it too easy to trust people you perhaps shouldn’t trust. I would like an example from you of someone you should not have trusted, but did, and why that situation went wrong.”

“Okay. Um. Well, there’s the big one, I guess - I trusted God.”

“God. And you  _ shouldn’t  _ have?”

“Correct.”

“Why should you  _ not  _ have trusted God, Sam? Did he fail to answer a prayer? I think everyone’s had that experience, so I’m thinking you’re saying something else, something more complicated. Explain, please.”

“Sure. So, about eleven years ago, Cas saved Dean from Hell, and we found out that angels were real. And Cas told us that God was real, too, but He had been missing, for a long time. No one knew where He’d gone. Sometimes, He spoke to a certain angel, named Joshua, who tends Heaven’s garden, but He hadn’t shown himself to anyone for a very long time. And orders that the lower choirs of angels thought had come from Him had actually been coming from Michael and Raphael, the Archangels, and their little group of sycophants, including Zacharariah and Naomi. Naomi especially was the enforcer of their orders among the angels, and Zach, he enforced orders against humans. At one point, when Zach was trying to get Dean to agree to be Michael’s vessel, Zach gave me stomach cancer. But through all of that, I had faith and I trusted in God, because he was, well,  _ God _ . Even if He didn’t intervene, I trusted that there was a reason why not.”

“Okay, is that all, Sam?” Mia prodded gently.

“No. A few years back, we… well, we  _ met  _ God. He said he preferred to be called ‘Chuck,’ and he was in the body of a guy that we had thought was a prophet, Chuck Shurley - better known as Carver Edlund, the author of the  _ Supernatural  _ books. At the time that we met Him, He pretended that Chuck had been Him all along, but we know now that that wasn’t true.”

“How do you know that, Sam?” Mia asked.

“Because God has left Chuck’s body. Chuck is now staying with us at the Bunker, basically scared out of his mind that He might come back.

“Anyway, when we met God, He explained a lot of things. That He had a ‘hands off’ policy because He felt that when He’d kept stepping in and intervening, He was only making things worse, being an enabler of bad behavior, and He wanted us - humans - to learn from our mistakes. And what He said made sense to me, though it kinda pissed Dean off. So, at that point, I continued to trust in Him. 

“But about a year ago, maybe a little less, we found out that He had been playing us, all along. That He watches me and Dean, throws stuff at us on purpose to see how we’ll handle it, because it entertains Him to do so. That we’re His ‘favorite show.’ He got pissed when we refused to do things His way. 

“In addition, He was frightened of Jack’s power, and He wanted Dean to kill Jack. He made a special gun, which He wanted to call ‘the Equalizer’ that can kill anything - even Him - and He wanted Dean to use it to kill Jack, but if Dean had done so, it would have killed Dean, as well. Dean refused, and threw the gun away, onto the ground. 

“God made threats, and more stuff about how he’d been playing us for ages came out, and I got pissed. So, I picked up the gun and shot God, and He and I both ended up with a wound in our respective left shoulders. In retaliation, then, God opened a rift into Hell, as well as all the doors in Hell. He let all the souls and demons that were trapped down there out and sent them after us, then He just disappeared and left us to deal with it.”

“I see. All right, Sam. Do you have another example of someone you trusted, when you shouldn’t have done so?” Mia asked.

Sam thought for a second. “Well, there’s Becky. I’m not sure she qualifies, exactly.”

“Why’s that, Sam?”

“Well, I only ‘trusted’ her to the extent that I agreed to have a drink with her. Then she used a potion on me, slipped into my drink, which made me believe that I was in love with her. Under the potion’s influence, I married her. But as soon as the potion wore off, and she had no further potion to use, I came to my senses. We got the marriage annulled.”

“Okay. Let me ask you this, Sam. Is there anyone, right now, this minute, that you trust absolutely?” 

Sam considered that. “Dean. Cas. Jody. Donna. Claire. Alex. None of them has ever let me down.”

“I notice you did not include Gabriel in that list.”

“Well, Gabe  _ has _ let me down. That’s the problem. I  _ want  _ to trust him, I want to believe him when he says he won’t do it again, but… I don’t.”

“How did Gabe let you down, Sam? Tell me about that.”

“Basically, he writes checks his body can’t cash. He’s used to being this all-powerful being, almost a god, but when he comes up against his brothers, he forgets that they’re just as powerful as he, if not more so. So, he takes chances he shouldn’t take. 

“He went up against Lucifer to save me, Dean, Kali, and some civilians, and lost; we believed that he’d died, and he didn’t let us know differently for years. He went into hiding, and, perhaps ironically, he trusted someone he shouldn’t have to keep him hid. They literally sold him to one of his enemies, who kept him prisoner for a long time. 

“He got out of that, and Cas and I nursed him back to health, and within a week, he went up against Michael in the Apocalypse World alternate universe, again, to save me and Dean, knowing he’d lose, and of course, he did lose, and Michael killed him. I begged him not to do it, I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he just said that he was done running from his family, and walked right into a fight he knew he couldn’t win. Michael killed him, and only when the Cosmic Entity in charge of the Empty - where angels and demons go when they die - woke the angels loyal to Cas, so that Cas could ‘take care’ of God so the Entity wouldn’t have to deal with it, did he come back. 

“And now, he promises that he won’t take such unnecessary risks, but he still does. He went with Cas to rescue Chuck and Kathy when God left Chuck’s body for wherever He’s gone now. He didn’t have to go, Cas could’ve handled it alone, but he did. 

“Now, I can’t shake the feeling that when it comes down to it, he’ll rush in and do something else stupid, probably in the name of saving me and Dean again, and I can’t trust that he’ll keep his word not to do so.”

Mia considered that, and replied, “Is that because you know that he loves you, and would do anything to save you, including die, willingly?”

“Exactly.”

“Sam. Wouldn’t you do the same for him, if the situation were reversed?” Mia pointed out, gently.

“Well, sure. Of course. But it’s  _ not _ . I’m not an archangel, I haven’t spent centuries with essentially unlimited power making me believe that I can handle anything tossed my way. I don’t rush into fights I know I can’t win.”

“Sam, you literally just told me that you shot  _ God _ . You want to rethink that statement?” Mia chuckled softly.

“That’s not the same thing. I didn’t rush headlong into a shoot-out with God,” Sam insisted.

“Sam, I’m sorry, but from where I’m sitting, it’s  _ exactly _ the same thing. In the heat of the moment, when it came down to God or your loved ones - Jack, Dean, and Castiel - you picked up the gun and you shot God.”

“Fine, but I  _ lived. _ Mia!”

Mia paused a moment. “So, what you’re really saying is not that you don’t trust Gabriel to  _ take risks _ , it’s that you don’t trust Gabriel  _ not to die _ .”

“Exactly!”

“Well, Sam, that’s hardly fair. Gabriel can’t control if and when he dies. If he’s an archangel, why shouldn’t he have as much power as other archangels, such that going into a fight with Lucifer, or Michael, he might win? Yes, certainly, it’s a risk to do so, but no more of a risk than you took when you picked up that gun, Sam. And going with Castiel to pick up Chuck and Kathy, when God was no longer there, doesn’t sound like much of a risk, at all - and he did come back from that, correct?”

“Well, yeah.” Sam said.

“Sam, I hate to say this, and I don’t mean it to be cruel, but, frankly, you sounded just then like a stubborn child, who’s pouting because he knows he’s on the wrong side of an argument, but doesn’t want to give it up quite yet,” Mia told him, gently.

Startled, Sam chuckled at that. “I suppose I do. Probably because that’s exactly what I’m being.” Sam sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. Gabe can’t control his death. I can’t ask him to, and I’m being unfair about it.”

“I don’t think you trust unfairly, Sam. Almost all of us have been taught from a young age that God is good. You had a reason to trust in Him. And once he proved untrustworthy, you stopped trusting Him, which only makes sense. Your only other example, Becky, literally drugged you; as you said yourself, you only trusted her in that you agreed to have a drink with her. The people that you listed as people you trust, are all people who, as you said yourself, have never let you down.”

Sam was nodding, and said, “Yeah. I get it.”

“So, I think we can dispose of this issue now, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Excellent. And with that, Sam, our time today is up. I’ll speak with you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mia. Have a good day.”

“You too, Sam. Bye.” Mia ended the call.

Sam leaned back in the recliner and closed his eyes for a moment. 

_ Is it really that simple?  _

Concluding that, yes, in fact, it  _ was _ exactly that simple, Sam rose and headed out to find Gabriel. He needed to apologize to his archangel.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, two calls, one issue fully disposed of. Progress! ;)
> 
> Please comment!


	4. Third Call - Sunday Morning:  Addictive Substances and the Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Mia talk about Sam's history with his addiction to demon blood, his psychic powers, and relatedly, how uncomfortable he is with the truth that he literally saved the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, kiddies, this is a long one. ;)

As he’d done each of the two preceding days, Sam went to the soundproofed room down the hall from the library. Sam got comfortable in the same reclining chair, and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed Mia’s number, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long; as usual, Mia answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Sam. Good morning. Are you seated comfortably, somewhere you won’t be disturbed, and ready to begin?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sam smiled.

“Excellent. Let’s get right into it, then. Our topic for discussion today is two-fold: your addiction to demon blood, and, relatedly, how uncomfortable you are with the truth that you literally saved the world.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Yes, Sam, you did. You got control of your body, wrested control back from Lucifer himself, and jumped into the Cage to trap him again. That saved _everyone_ , Sam. You literally stopped the Apocalypse.”

“ _But I let him out in the first place_ , Mia. That was just me fixing my own mistake.” Sam bit gently at a hangnail, worrying at it with his teeth a bit.

“My understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong here, Sam, is that you were manipulated and lied to by a demon named Ruby, who told you you were doing what needed to be done to keep Lucifer locked away; is that not correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct, but I should never have trusted Ruby in the first place. Everyone warned me not to, Dean, Bobby, hell, even Lilith told me not to trust her! The demon we killed to get the blood for me to drink to have the strength to kill Lilith told me not to trust Ruby. I didn’t listen. I was so sure that it had to be me that would save us all by stopping Lilith from breaking the final seal, I was so smug, so annoyingly self-satisfied, that I wouldn’t listen to anyone but Ruby, who constantly told me what I wanted to hear.” Sam’s self-loathing was evident in his tone of voice.

“Sam. Ruby, from what I know of the situation, from you and from others, got you addicted to demon blood, which had certain effects on your body and mind, correct?” Mia asked.

“Yes.”

“Was one of those effects the inability to think clearly?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what it was like, Sam.”

“It was like having a...a hive of bees, buzzing beneath your skin, in your veins. A...a loud thrumming noise, constantly in the background, though no one else could hear it. It was like having to swim through molasses to move, and thinking was unbearably painful and slow. But that feeling was only in retrospect. During, it felt like I could move mountains, like I was the most powerful being in the world, like I could do anything, with the merest thought. And I could. 

“I moved a wardrobe with my mind once, I was trapped in a closet downstairs in a house, with the wardrobe in front of the door; Dean was upstairs, in danger, and - I guess it must have been the adrenaline of the situation, because I wasn’t drinking demon blood yet, then - I just shoved the wardrobe out of the way with a thought, like it was nothing. I couldn’t have moved it with my body, it was far too heavy and large for that. It wasn’t like I shoved at the door bodily and the wardrobe moved incrementally. I shoved with my mind, from a foot back from the door, and the wardrobe moved three feet, so I could open the door and get out. But that was the only time I was able to do anything like that.”

“What else could you do with your mind, Sam?”

“Kill demons. At first, it was just forcing them to smoke out of the vessel they’d possessed, and sending them back to Hell, but as I progressed, it was killing them outright.”

“When did you last kill a demon with your mind, Sam?” Mia asked calmly.

Sam considered the question carefully. “I killed Lillith. But she wasn’t the last one. After that, there were a few other times when I killed demons with my mind. I think the last time was… well, there were some demons at Lucifer’s side when Dean and I went to Detroit so I could say ‘yes’ to him; they were holding us, and I killed them; I had just drunk gallons of demon blood to be able to accommodate Lucifer as his vessel, which was probably a mistake, frankly; we had heard that Nick, the guy who Lucifer used as a vessel before and sometimes after me, was drinking it by the gallon and thought I would need to as well. But it wasn’t necessary for me. Lucifer told me later that I was a better genetic fit for Lucifer than Nick was. After that, I don’t believe I killed any other demons with my mind. Lucifer killed some while he was in me, but that was _him_ , not me.”

“So, right before you let him in, then?”

“Correct,” Sam confirmed.

“Did demon blood give you any other powers, Sam?”

“Well, I’m not sure. See, Ruby said something right before Dean killed her, after I killed Lilith, when she was gloating about how she’d manipulated me.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that the power was in me all along, and she called me Dumbo. At first, I thought she was just insulting me, but then I saw the Disney movie, y’know, the one with the flying elephant? And I realized what she’d really meant.”

“I’ve seen the Disney movie. Let me think. Oh, yes, Dumbo the elephant has the power to fly, but he lacks the confidence to use the ability, until he’s given a feather to hold in his trunk. He believes that it’s the feather that gives him the power, and as long as he’s holding the feather, he can use the power. But in fact, the feather is just a placebo.”

“Right. And what Ruby was saying was that I had the power in me all along, and the demon blood, that was just a placebo that gave me the _confidence_ to harness the power and use it. There was a limit to how much I could do; I burned myself out temporarily, killing Lilith, so I couldn’t use my power to kill Ruby, as well. 

“So, she’s standing there, gloating about how she tricked everyone, not just me, but Alastair and all the demons, and how only Lilith knew her real mission, and she said, ‘It wasn't the blood. It was you... and your choices. I just gave you the options, and you chose the right path every time. You didn't need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo! I know it's hard to see it now... but this is a miracle. So long coming. Everything Azazel did, and Lilith did. Just to get you here. And you were the only one who could do it.’ 

“I asked, “Why me?’ 

“And she said ‘Because it had to be you, Sammy. It always had to be you. You saved us. You set him free. And he’s gonna be grateful. He’s gonna repay you in ways that you can’t even imagine.’”

“And by then Dean had managed to get into the room with us; he had the demon-killing knife, and I held her in place while he drove it into her and killed her.”

“Sam, why did Ruby think it had to be you? Because you were the ‘genetic fit’ for Lucifer that you spoke of earlier?” Mia asked.

“I think so, yeah. Couldn’t exactly ask her what she meant.” Sam let himself chuckle darkly at that.

“Right. So Ruby was saying that your powers weren’t the product of the blood you were drinking, that was just a placebo effect to give you the confidence you needed to actually _use_ the powers you already had.”

“Correct.”

“So, then I have to ask, Sam; why don’t you continue to use your powers, now? You’ve said you haven’t killed a demon with your mind since saying ‘yes’ to Lucifer. That was a long time ago now, wasn’t it?” Mia said.

“Well, yeah. I guess…. I don’t really know. Dean didn’t like me using my powers, he was a little afraid of the whole psychic thing, the visions, the demon-killing, all of it.”

“Was that because he thought it was a product of the blood?”

“Well, the visions weren’t. I mean, I had a vision of Jess dying before she actually did die, I mean, I saw it happen days before, but I just thought it was a dream. Thinking back, there were other instances where I had dreamed things, and then they happened, but I just thought it was like _deja vu_ , or a coincidence. Jess’ death was the first time I really realized that it was a thing, a power, that I had.”

“Now, in our first session, you said that you continue to have vision dreams, correct, Sam?” Mia asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“And you’re not drinking demon blood now, I take it?”

“Well, no.”

“And haven’t for some time?”

“Right. Not since Lucifer.”

“So, that’s about ten years since you’ve drunk demon blood, if I’ve got my dates right, but you still have vision dreams.”

“Correct,” Sam confirmed.

“Interesting. Does Dean know about the dreams, Sam? Have you told him?”

“No. I mean, he knows that I have bad _dreams_ , but not that I still have _visions_ ; I don’t tell him, I just try to head off the consequences I see in the dreams without letting him know that I have the knowledge I have from them.”

“Have you ever had a _waking_ vision, Sam?” Mia asked.

“Yes. But those stopped a long time ago. It’s just in dreams that I have them, now.”

“How often?”

“Maybe three or four times a year. The only way I know if a particular dream is a vision is… well, there’s two things. One, it’s something that hasn’t happened _yet_ , where most of my dreams are memories, so when I wake up, and think about it, I recognize the difference. But the main thing is that the vision dreams recur, and the second time I have the vision, I remember back to the first time I had it, and it’s like something in my head clicks, and I know, during the second iteration of the dream, that ‘oh, this is a vision, not just a dream.’ And then I usually have, like I said before, until the fourth iteration of the dream to head off the negative consequences that I see happening - and there’s always some negative consequence that I see - before the events of the dream start to happen around me in the waking world. And usually, I’m able to change something, some detail, ahead of time, so that the negative consequences that I saw in the vision don’t actually occur.”

“And then you just go on with your day?”

Sam shrugged, even though Mia couldn’t see. “Pretty much, yeah. I mean, what else am I going to do? Tell Dean, who’s already biased against my psychic abilities, ‘hey, I just headed off a bad thing that I dreamt about last week’? It’s not like I could prove it.”

Mia hummed in understanding. “So, going back to the side effects of drinking the demon blood for a moment, they don’t sound particularly pleasant. A loud thrumming noise that only you can hear, a feeling like you’re swimming through molasses to move, thinking is slow and painful for you; is there anything else?”

“Well, yeah. Coming down, I had violent hallucinations. In fact, Dean and Bobby locked me in Bobby’s panic room in the basement of his house, it’s completely warded, ghost and demon-free, and the demon blood still in my system literally threw me around the room; they had to restrain me to the metal bedframe to keep me from getting hurt. First, I saw Alastair torturing me, but it wasn’t real, and then it faded and I found that I was fine; then I saw, in turn, my younger self, and my late mother, both suggesting that I should kill myself, or Dean; I had full conversations with them. And then I hallucinated Dean, telling me that I was a monster; he was really upstairs the whole time.”

“Wait. Dean and Bobby made you go cold turkey, they didn’t try to wean you off the addictive substance slowly?”

“Correct. Dean only just apologized to me for it a few weeks ago, actually, in the context of getting dry himself. He admitted that he hadn’t realized at the time what I was going through, that he still didn’t really fully understand it. But that Cas had pointed out that he could have died from withdrawal, going cold turkey from alcohol after drinking so much the night of their fight, and that it suddenly had clicked for him, what he’d made me go through.”

“So, when was that, that they locked you up that way?”

“Well, which time? There were a couple times I had to be locked in Bobby’s panic room, for my own good.”

“But they were both before you said ‘yes’ to Lucifer?” Mia asked.

“Yes,” Sam confirmed. “Actually, it’s odd; neither time that Dean tried to dry me out was it because _Ruby_ gave me demon blood. 

“The first time, it was because I killed and drank the blood of a demon that had gone after Cas’ vessel’s family, and Dean found me kneeling over the body, blood smeared all over my face; that was the time that I had the really bad hallucinations that I told you about.

“The second time, Famine, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, sent two demons after me while I was under the effect that Famine creates, where you feel like you’re starving for whatever it is you’re addicted to. For some, it’s love; for some, it’s alcohol; for Cas, it was cheeseburgers. For me, it was demon blood, and Famine knew it. He said he sent them to me as ‘a snack.’ He knew I’d overpower them and be unable to resist. And he was right. But it turned out to be good for us, because when I refused to kill the other demons he had in his entourage, he consumed them, and then I was able to pull them out of him - through his skin - and send them back to Hell, which killed Famine himself. But then I had to dry out again.”

“Were there any other times?”

“No, just those two.”

“What about after you killed Lilith?” Mia inquired.

“Well, that’s odd, see; after I killed Lilith, we had the conversation with Ruby that I already told you about, and then the floor was opening to let Lucifer out of the cage. There was a column of bright white light from the hole in the floor - and then suddenly Dean and I weren’t _there_ anymore. We were on a commercial flight, on an airplane, flying over the same general area, a few minutes _before_ that same column of light shot up from the ground below, and the pilot flying the plane had to steer hard out of its way to avoid it. Cas told us later that he believed that God had saved us from being in Lucifer’s presence and put us on that flight, and when He did it, apparently, God, well, scrubbed me clean of the demon blood, and I felt… clean. For maybe the first time in my life.”

“I’m confused, did you have demon blood _before_ Ruby?”

“Yeah, well, just a couple of drops. Azazel gave all of his ‘Special Children’ a few drops of his blood to give our powers a ‘nudge’ to get us going. That’s why he was in my nursery when I was six months’ old, and why he killed my mother when she discovered him standing over me in my crib.”

“But I thought you said Ruby told you that the blood didn’t give you the powers…? Am I missing something here, Sam?” Mia was still confused.

“What I think, Mia, is this - and of course, I can’t know if I’m right, because I can’t ask anyone, but I think this is it - that Azazel’s blood didn’t give me powers I didn’t already have. I was already a potential psychic, but the powers might have stayed dormant, or activated on their own, and he didn’t want to take a chance, he wanted them to be active when the time was right. So, he gave me a couple of drops of blood, and that activated the powers I already had, gave them, as I said, a ‘nudge’. But with Dad and Dean hunting supernatural things the whole time I was growing up, I never tried to use the powers. 

“Like I said before, I just thought that the dreams I had now and then were _deja vu_ , coincidences. Until Jess. And, it turns out, her death was engineered by Azazel, too; he called the shots, but a demon wearing my friend, Brady, was the one who pulled the trigger. I found that out later, because the same demon, still wearing Brady’s meat suit, was the ‘stable master’ for the Horsemen, and we got the location of Pestilence from him, and while we were doing that, the whole situation with Jess’ death came up.”

“All right. I think we’ve lost focus a bit. Let’s circle back for a moment. If I’m understanding you correctly, you were given a few drops of demon blood as an infant, to activate psychic powers you already possessed. But because of your family’s background with hunting of supernatural things, you didn’t feel comfortable calling on such powers, so you never tried to develop them, and only when you were away from your family, at college, did you allow your visions to become strong enough to realize that’s what they were, when they showed you Jess’ death ahead of time, and then she actually died in the manner your dreams had shown. Have I got this right so far, Sam?”

“Yes.”

“Then Ruby convinced you to try to strengthen your psychic powers in order to be able to kill demons, and manipulated you into drinking more and more demon blood as a means of giving you the confidence you needed to utilize the potential you already possessed. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then you dried out a couple of times, at Dean’s insistence, going cold turkey through what sounds like some terrible withdrawal symptoms. You killed Lilith, broke the final seal, and released Lucifer, at which point God removed you and Dean from the scene to an aircraft flying overhead, and cleansed you of the presence of the demon blood. Am I still on track?”

“Yep.”

“Then you decided to say ‘yes’ to Lucifer to trap him, so you drank demon blood on purpose, thinking you needed it to be able to accommodate him within you, which you later learned was a mistake. Lucifer took full possession of you, but you eventually managed to wrest back control of your body from him, and trapped him in the Cage. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. So, then what happened? Obviously, you’re not still in the Cage now.”

“Correct. Cas was able to pull my body out of the Cage, but didn’t realize right away that he’d left behind my soul. Dean made a deal with Death, and Death went and got my soul out, but then Death had to erect a wall between my soul and the rest of me so that I couldn’t remember all of what I had experienced in Hell, because knowing would do too much damage to my psyche. Then Cas broke the wall, and I ended up institutionalized, having full-on hallucinations of Lucifer, in Nick’s body, following me everywhere I went, singing to me, making jokes, never letting me sleep. Later, Cas felt guilty, so he took the damage into himself, and then he went a little crazy for a while, and _he_ had to be institutionalized, instead. But when I came back from the Cage, the effects of the demon blood were gone. It wasn’t in my system anymore, maybe burned out in Hell, I don’t know. But that was that, and I haven’t had it since.”

“Okay. Well, obviously, we have a lot of ground to cover on these issues. We’ve been on the phone for a little more than our allotted thirty minutes, here, but I think we needed to have this all out in the open, establishing the timeline, the effects of the addictive substance, the efforts used to remove it from your system, and the damage it did to you. Do you feel we made progress today, Sam?” Mia asked.

“I do. You needed to know all this stuff, and there’s a lot of it to cover. It wasn’t stuff we could really go through in our opening session in your office.”

“All right. Well, I think perhaps tomorrow we’ll change subjects, but it’s good to have this background. It gives me a better understanding of what you went through. Again, I want to note that I think it’s important that you’ve been without your addictive substance for over ten years. Ten years sober, Sam, that’s huge. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I hadn’t really thought of it like that.”

“Well, you should. It’s a real accomplishment. Whether it was burned out of you by God, or in Hell, or you just got yourself shed of it, you didn’t go back to it. And it’s not like you haven’t killed demons in the interim, right? You’ve had opportunities to drink demon blood, and you just haven’t done so, correct?”

“Well...yeah, I guess that’s true,” Sam realized.

“Excellent. Well, I think that’s a good place to stop for the day, then. We will get back into these issues later, Sam, but again, we’ll focus on something else tomorrow. Now, go, be active, do something physical and get out of your head for a bit.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have a good day, Sam.”

“You too, Mia. Thanks.”

They ended the call, and Sam sat still for a moment, digesting it. Ten years sober. He hadn’t considered that. It gave him a warm feeling in his head that he thought he might want to examine later, but for now, he felt like a run. So, he got up, and went to go find Gabe.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten years since he last touched a drop. ;) PROGRESS. Even if he still can't admit he literally saved the world without calling it "just fixing my own mistake." 
> 
> I know it's been a while since I updated this story, but you have to understand that this story is dependent on the timeline of the larger story in "You're a Mean One, Mr. Winchester." It took weeks of *our* time to get through a single day in that fic, because so much is going on, both in the story and in my real life. So, this story only updates "once a day" in the fictional timeline, as I don't want Sam and Mia to get ahead of where that timeline is in the main story. ;) So sorry, y'all will just have to wait for more of Sam's therapy.
> 
> Please note, however, that my other stories are also updating - Dean in Hell is now on Chapter 15, and I have a new story, Two Nuns Talking, which is entirely unrelated to this series, but you should check it out, regardless! ;)
> 
> Please comment! I want to know who's reading this, and what you think of it! It's important to me! Comments are life! Thanks!!! :D


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